Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA by Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn is said to be mulling a proxy campaign to elect new board members at Yahoo after the company failed to forge a deal to merge with Microsoft. Late last week, Icahn began building a significant position in Yahoo that may be as much as 50 million shares. (Iwantmedia 5/14, http://www.cnbc.com/id/24599711/site/14081545 5/13)

Paris Hilton, her sister Nicky and her mom Kathy are making the jump to the PC screen starring in 6-part miniseries sponsored by Kathy’s My Secret perfume and produced by New York-based For Your Imagination. A Day With the Hiltons follows a mother-daughter duo who won a trip to LA to shop and dine with the Hiltons. TV Guide Broadband will syndicate the series through existing relationships with YouTube, Hulu, Veoh and other affiliates. (Cynopsis 5/14)

YouTube introduced a new ad product called “buzz targeting,” helping producers benefit when their videos go viral. The site created an algorithm analyzing acceleration of views, favorites and ratings activity to determine which videos are about to take off, allowing advertisers to contour their ads to fit with these up and coming videos. Lionsgate was the first sponsor to test the system, running ads for The Forbidden Kingdom against more than 500 partner videos. (Cynopsis 5/14, http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3629485 5/14)

The world had real-time news about China’s massive earthquake as local victims dashed out “twitter” text messages while it took place, spreading the news before it was reported by mainstream news outlets. The event “has the potential to bring mainstream media into the Twitter world.” (Iwantmedia 5/14, http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080514/tc_afp/uschinaitinternetmediaearthdisastertwitter 5/14)

A notorious “Spam King” and his partner owe MySpace about $230 million in damages after a federal judge awarded the popular online hangout what is believed to be the largest anti-spam judgment ever. Parent company News Corp. hopes the judgment will serve to deter other spammers. (Iwantmedia 5/14, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080514/ap_on_hi_te/myspace_spam_award 5/14)

John Malone’s Liberty Media on Tuesday dropped its opposition to a plan by Barry Diller to split his IAC/InterActiveCorp into five separate companies, one of which is the HSN cable shopping network. Liberty Media is a major shareholder in IAC, and Malone had been against the move because it will dilute his voting strength. (The New York Times 5/14, The Wall Street Journal 5/14)

Craigslist.com filed a counter lawsuit against its minority shareholder eBay in a Bay area court yesterday, accusing eBay of unfair business practices, copyright infringement and a list of other no-no’s. Ebay started it with a suit filed last month alleging Craigslist unfairly diluted its interest in the company by more than 10%. (Cynopsis 5/14, http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSN1333683520080513 5/13)

Online advertising is starting to feel the effects of a tepid economy, according to industry analysis firm PubMatic. Based on data from “billions of ad impressions” and several thousand online publishers, PubMatic asserts that clicks per thousand monetization rates are dropping. (Iwantmedia 5/14, http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9943380-36.html 5/13)

eMarketer is revising its U.S. social network ad spending forecast, projecting that advertisers will spend $1.4 billion to place ads on online social networks this year, down from a previous projection of $1.6 billion. The change is due in part to a lack of successful ad models. (Iwantmedia 5/14, http://www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080513/FREE/144876094/1087 5/13)

Comcast Media Center is launching a centralized platform at the National Cable Show to support advanced interactive application developers and facilitate the launch of their interactive services on cable systems serving small to mid-size markets. (Cynopsis 5/14)

Total worldwide revenue generated from User Generated Video (UGV) is expected to exceed $1.19 billion by 2012, according to a new report from In-Stat. More than 160 billion videos are expected to be served that year – putting even greater demands on ISPs – thanks to the proliferation of cheap HD cameras. Mobile UGV uploads are also expected to make up a significant share of the market. (Cynopsis 5/14)

Top U.S. Online Video Properties by Unique Viewers – March 2008
Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations
Property                  Unique Viewers (000)  Average Videos per Viewer
Google Sites                  85,670                   50.9
Fox Interactive Media     54,294                    8.8
Yahoo! Sites                  37,536                    8.7
Viacom Digital               26,642                    9.4
Microsoft Sites               25,194                    9.7
Time Warner – Excl. AOL 22,366                    7.1
AOL LLC                        21,860                    4.6
Disney Online                12,249                    8.8
ESPN                            10,053                    8.9
CBS Corporation              9,486                    6.6
Total Internet             138,576                   82.8
Source: comScore Video Metrix

Leave a Comment so far
Leave a comment